Thing is Jackson is unreliable. If he's gonna disappear just like that, might as well go on with the show. He's skilled for sure, but too much of a wildcard.

But the thing that pisses me off, and I saw it in the first story arc of Crossed: Badlands, is the racial stuff. Even with all that happened, the Crossed as equal opportunity predators, the survivors are still going on with 'wog' and 'Sambo'. That doesn't help when you need everyone pulling in the same direction to live another day.

But then again, I guess it's telling and part of being human, that even when there are rape-happy killmonsters lurking all about, people can still not leave the bullshit behind.

This series has me on the edge of my seat week to week, and I even look forward to the interludes (which next week should be). Damn the charges that this episodic serial is a mere soap opera dressed in horrific trappings. This is survival horror at its finest and if it does loosely fall under the soap opera category, then the soap opera is redeemed by that association as far as I'm concerned.

I'm hoping that the new group of survivors will be invited back to Cava (where they'll all make themselves useful and pull their weight by pooling their various skills) despite exceeding the immigration limit on Shakey's list, and that Jackson will turn up unharmed and explain his sudden disappearance as a means of forcing Shakey's group to learn to survive without training wheels or crutches. I'm guessing, however, that things simply won't turn out so hunky dory.

Ah, yes. Here we get some Walking Dead style conundrums. The problem of "these people can be useful but they can also fuck us over and take over our place". Which is probably what the "max 2" message is about... Gotta be sure that you can handle'em if things go bad.

They lost more than 2, though. Sofia, the paratrooper, the Pakistani child, the boy who got sick after eating infected fish, and the teen on the boat in the very first chapter have all died so far.

Speaking of Sofia, I'm a bit surprised that nobody on Cava could communicate with her through writing. I can understand the limeys and their colonial derivatives not understanding Spanish, but Seline should know at least some variation of Tex-Mex, as is common throughout Texas. That's enough to at least communicate on a basic level with a Castilian, though if Sofia was Bosque or Catalan then of course that might prove insurmountable.

Can't wait to see where this new "crew" heads now...and how (or maybe WHICH) side of the herds gets "thinned" for the sake of introducing 2 newbies. Shaky is definitely shady to put it mildly - I can easily see him getting rid of 'ol what'shisname, and/or Seline...Tabitha will be more difficult because he has a hard on for her, but who knows what might sway the fucking criminal, heh heh.

@stanandcindy, I think Shaky wrote the note rather then picking it up, well that is how I read the scene. Or he already had the note from someone on Cava. My initial thought was that it was a note for the nun but suspect that not the case. Ditto my thoughts on Viceroy especially.

I'm hoping that Jackson, well aware of the potential danger of giving away their location, bailed out BUT at the same time, is following from a safe distance – since he has a 'working relationship' with Cava it's probably in his best interests to make sure the group survive. The fact that he's as mad as a bag of spanners doesn't make it easy to judge either way though.

I'm also hoping that the Cava crew don't for the most part get killed by the other crew. Although it'd be quite fitting if the guy who nobody really knows that well died before telling his 'origins' story. A shame though, because he's popped up on the radar a few times now, and I'm curious as to what his story is.

Great chapter, the first when I've actually thought... oh... this looks bad...

Skip's special secret origin has already been divulged, and thus am I starting to get this sinking feeling that, once the sortie on the mainland has gathered all of the supplies and uninfected survivors that it can handle, it will return to shore and row out to find Skip and his boat scattered in pieces (courtesy of those boating patrols of either mutant crossed or crazy self-mutilating-but-officially-uninfected survivors-turned-predators who catch poor Skip when he's asleep or otherwise off his guard). That's not what I'd like to see happen, of course, but so far very little to none of what I want to see happen has actually occurred in these dark and depressing but still compelling post apocalyptic survival horror series.

@Deadly Ramon Yeah, I have been worrying about that since Jackson vanished(and I don't think he is coming back, at least, not any time soon. I certainly think he is gone for the rest of this chapter). I think a mad scramble to find a new boat is in the offing. And I still think the nun is infected. I don't see how the crossed would not attack her. If she turns out to be uninfected, it will piss me off. I mean, there are rules about this sort of thing lol!

I still think Shaky's imagining the nun, and that his hallucinations are the result of the tremendous guilt he has over the way he let the Gameskeeper mistreat her. He's on this sortie in order to ease his conscience, which is also why I think the character might say to hell with the 2 survivor limit and invite all six members of the newly discovered crew (which would only be one more than the Cava population at the start of the series).

I quite like the idea of the nun being a guilt-based hallucination, but she did appear to be interacting with one of the Crossed when he gave her the leg stump. I suppose that could've been imaginary too.

I also like the fact that Shakey has been entrusted with the list. I guess, after the way he arranged to be included in the sortie he also showed Rab what an underhand and calculating bastard he could be, which makes him the most likely member of the group to escape any trouble actually get any of that stuff back to the island.